Michelle and Barack Obama Want to Divide Instead of Inspire

May 7, 2015

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, I’ve had this for a couple of days. I’ve intended to get to this, and I’m gonna do it this hour, ’cause I’ll tell you, it infuriates me. This is something else being done on purpose, that’s being done to rip this country apart, and it’s unconscionable. No, no. This business about Michelle saying that museums are for white people. What’s the point of this? Ah, she’s talking about (paraphrased), “When I was young, I would walk by museums, but I would know, ‘That’s not for me.

“‘I’m not allowed in places! Those people don’t want me.’ Black people to this day, museums, they know that it’s not just for them.” Ridiculous! Why play the race card over something like that? “First lady Michelle Obama used a speech Monday that was supposed to be celebrating the opening of a new museum…” It was the dedication of $420 million new building at the Whitney Building in New York City on Monday, and a whole bunch of Democrat luminaries were there.

Bill de Blasio, the mayor — the architect, Renzo Piano — and Moochelle Obama. Instead of just congratulating the staff and praising the museums or whatever you do at a museum opening, she decided to lecture everybody about “diversity.” Everything has to be about race with these people! You know, we were supposed to be post-racial with the election of Obama. We’re supposed to have put all that behind us.

His election was supposed to mean something. It was supposed to signify that we had overcome and gotten past the original sin of slavery. And instead, as I knew would be the case, it’s gotten worse by design. And this is one of the reasons why. Here her husband is president, the first African-American president in our history, and instead of lauding this new museum and whatever these effete snobs at these museums do, to take the occasion here to widen the racial gap?

“‘Museums and concert halls,’ she said, just don’t welcome non-white visitors — especially children — the way they welcome whites.” Can you imagine being in the audience for this? I mean, even if you’re a committed liberal, you don’t want to hear this stuff all the time, I wouldn’t think. You’re here at a museum dedication, and you want to hear an angry first lady stand up and start complaining about stuff like this?

“Speaking at the new Whitney museum in New York CityÂ’s meat packing district last week, Obama said she grew up thinking that museums were not places ‘for someone who looks like me.'” No different than, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” She said, “You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers and they think to themselves:

“‘Well, that’s not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood.’ In fact, I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum.” Can you imagine insulting the people who run the museum that you’re there to dedicate, all for the purpose of stirring things up in the seventh year of your husband’s presidency?

Now, here’s the thing. Michelle Malkin has this Twitter website called Twitchy where she curates a bunch of different tweets, subject to subject and person to person. According to the curation that she did on this, “Obama’s remarks went largely unnoticed outside of the event, until a local radio host reported on ‘Museums as White Spaces.'” Nobody at the event thought a thing of it. But there was a little blurb about it that some local radio host — I don’t know who — heard about it and “Museums as white spaces.”

“The tone of her speech was eerily similar to her husband’s remarks during the launch of My BrotherÂ’s Keeper Alliance in New York City on Monday, in which Obama cited boys and young men of color being treated differently by law enforcement when it comes to stops and arrests.” So she was just carrying forward a theme that her husband had laid down earlier in the week. By design. It was a strategy.

There is a purposeful effort here to divide of people of this country along racial lines.

Make no mistake about it.

Jon Gabriel at Ricochet decided to write about this, and he said, “Instead of merely congratulating the museum staff and praising their mission, the First Lady decided to lecture them about diversity. One of her claims struck me as quite odd: ‘You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and,” blah, blah, blah, “think, ‘Well, thatÂ’s not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood.'”

This guy points out that he has been to Chicago Museums.

“I have been to several Chicago museums on many occasions. Whether I was at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, or the Museum of Science and Industry, the bustling crowds were made up of every ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Buses brought in schoolkids from each neighborhood in Chicago and every [sub]burbs surrounding it. I’m sure a young Michelle Obama participated in similar field trips many times.”

Meaning: She had to have been taken to museums when she was young. She did not grow up in a poor side of Chicago. She’s not from the wrong side of town. Or, as Johnny Rivers would say: The poor side of town. “[I]tÂ’s not as if she grew up in poverty, relegated to the South Side’s infamous housing projects like some of my friends.” Again, this is John Gabriel writing. “The First Lady had a thoroughly middle-class upbringing in a stable, nuclear family.

“Her excellent grades got her into ChicagoÂ’s superb Whitney Young Magnet High School where she was given one of the finest secondary educations in the state. Did this smart, successful student actually think ChicagoÂ’s many popular museums were closed to ‘someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood?’ Did she ‘never in a million years dream’ she would be welcome in these cultural centers, even though her school must have had field trips to most of them?”

He writes, “I find this very hard to believe.”

“So why does she continue to identify herself and ‘people like her’ as oppressed, aggrieved victims rather than strong, capable winners?” And you see, folks, that’s the question. She wasn’t excluded from anything in Chicago ever. Why do, of all people, the president and the first lady — historical by any stretch, at the pinnacle of achievement, overcoming what some would say are impossible odds — continue to run around angry and with a chip on your shoulder as though you are an aggrieved victim of something, when you clearly are not?

Why not instead take the occasion of your achievement and your accomplishment and motivate and inspire? If you remember my first nationally televised speech to the nation at CPAC, I chided Obama for this. Remember that, Snerdley?This would have been 2009, February 2009. He’d just been inaugurated, and I praised his oratorical skills (if the prompter is written right). I said, “He’s got so much potential. He could be so inspirational and so uplifting if he chose to, but no.”

It was true then and it’s true now. It would be one thing, you know, if they let somebody incarcerated out of jail to go help open a museum and he started talking about being a victim in this and that, and, “I can’t believe they let me out of jail to come to this museum.” But she’s the first lady of the United States! Why not take the occasion of all this to inspire all these people? Do you ever stop to think maybe a museum and thing like that is not in their cultural upbringing and maybe it should be?

Think maybe the reason they don’t go there is because places like that are mocked and laughed at? Well, what’s the popular phrase? “They’re too white. You don’t go to a museum! They’re too white. Nobody goes there. It’s not cool.” I just… This to me… You talk about a disservice to people? “Museums are for white people, not welcoming someone like me”? Portraying herself and her husband as discriminated-against victims? Can you imagine the good they could do with just a positive mental inspirational attitude?

Do you realize how they could motivate and inspire people if they wanted to? Why don’t they want to do that? They don’t, obviously. They need victims! They need a permanent underclass. They need people thinking the deck’s stacked against ’em. They need people who believe they need representation, representatives, people standing up for ’em ’cause they can’t do it on their own. Her senior thesis, if you remember — and I do because I’m me. Michelle Obama’s senior thesis, do you remember where it was?

Remember where she went to school? Well, it wasn’t East Ovary U. It was Princeton. It was Princeton. It wasn’t some place in the sticks. And her senior thesis was all about how out of place she felt there. Sotomayor had a similar thesis at the same place, and both of them were filled with rage and anger. And there they are! There! They are there! They got admitted, they are studying there, they’re succeeding there — and their theses, hers, was about how out of place she felt.

It seems to me that Michelle Obama has spent a lot of her time as first lady complaining about not feeling welcome. You go back to the campaign, the first time she ever felt proud of her country, right, was when her husband was running for president. (interruption) Well, yeah, but, you know, everybody that lives in the White House calls it a prison. A prison because of security and they can’t get out of there, but I don’t… (interruption) When she went to Spain? What’s that got to do with… (interruption) They welcome her everywhere.

That’s the point, they welcome her everywhere she goes and they talk about her as a fashion leader and a fashion plate. They welcome her everywhere. It’s a chip on… just rein it in here, Rush. You’re up to the edge already on this. You had to mention the White House. Can you imagine what they really think of that place? Obama said it, he made a speech recently and referred to it as a place we and other slaves built. Remember that? Yes, right, it was at Selma. When they’re commemorating the anniversary of what happened the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, and the movie, Selma, he did, he started talking about how the White House was built by — he used a personal pronoun somewhere in there.

Anyway, so is it any wonder what’s going on in Baltimore is going on? Is any wonder what’s happening in Ferguson, Missouri, is going on?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You should have heard what Snerdley just said to me about Michelle Obama. He said, “You know, you’re missing the point about Michelle and this white people at the museum.” He said, “She’s really telling us more than anything else what she thinks of lower class black people.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“Why do you think they sent their kids to Sidwell school? They don’t want to hang around with the single parent black mother kids.”

I said, “No, no, no, no. Obama closed down that school choice business to shore up the teachers unions and the public schools.”

He said, “Well, I don’t know. I think they’re class-conscious.”

Yeah, who isn’t class-conscious, especially people that have always aspired to be elites and then they get there, think they are, they may think they’re too good for others. Is that what you’re basically saying?

I hope to get to Baltimore. (laughing) But I’ve got audio of what she said at the museum, and apparently it’s even worse than just when I read it to you.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, here is Michelle Obama. This is on April 30th, is when this happened, in New York at the dedication of the Whitney Museum of American Art in the meatpacking district of Manhattan.

MICHELLE: You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers, and they think to themselves, “Well, that’s not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood.” In fact, I guarantee you that right now there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum. And growing up on the south side of Chicago, I was one of those kids myself. So I know the feeling of not belonging in a place like this. And today, as first lady, I know how that feeling limits the horizons of far too many of our young people.

RUSH: Yeah, and what are you doing to lift ’em? What are you doing to expand ’em? This is incredible. How race obsessed do you have to be to turn even a museum opening into a race thing. And as our previous blogger, Jon Gabriel, suggests, she’s probably been to a museum as a kid in Chicago. She didn’t grow up on the poor side of town. Johnny Rivers, 1968. Listen to this. She’s dedicating a museum, a new wing or a new building somewhere that some rich guy probably paid for. “I guarantee you right now kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream they’d be welcome.” Just indict everybody that works at this museum?

What, are they not engaged in racial outreach? How big a chip on your shoulder must you have to even be thinking of this at the dedication of a museum, that what it stands for, what the museum represents is just another in a long line of examples of stay away, you’re not wanted. You’re not welcome. Man, oh, man, you talk about wasted opportunities that this, the president and the first lady, have had.

I don’t know about you. Do you ever think about what you would do if you were president? Not just politics. You ever imagine what it would be like to win an election and live there in the White House? When you think of, do you not think of what an honor, what a rare privilege and honor it would be? Do you not think of all the history that you would be surrounded by and thus, by virtue of your election, part of? I can’t relate to somebody who is obsessed with resentment after achieving that pinnacle. But these two apparently are.

Now, I’ll add a caveat. Mr. Snerdley has raised my consciousness level about people who have genuine blood trace back to slavery and the White House could represent something not positive. I understand to some people that could be genuine, but these two, this is not them. They’re not from the down-with-the-struggle crowd. Obama especially isn’t. But I just can’t imagine what it would be like to run for the office of president and win and what that alone says, and then to have this deep-seated, never ending resentment for where you live?

I can try to understand it, but I really cannot relate to it. I don’t think it furthers anything or el elevates or improves anything to not use all the opportunities such a victory means to inspire and uplift people. That’s all I would do. In fact, that’s how I would win if I ever thought about running. I would talk about things inspiring the country. That’s what Reagan did. People that win the presidency do inspire people to be better than they think they can be. I don’t understand this.

I can understand having a chip on your shoulder, but get over it at some point. What better chance to get over it is there than becoming president of the United States, for crying out loud? What am I missing, Snerdley? It’s like getting in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame and being ticked off about it. Doesn’t make sense. And, by the way, nobody is, last I looked.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Joe in Frederick, Maryland. Thank you for waiting, sir. Great to have you here on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, sir. It’s an honor to speak to you Rush.

RUSH: I appreciate that.

CALLER: Hey, I wanted to make two comments, one hypothetical. Could you imagine Barbara Bush being invited to a ceremony when she was first lady at the Apollo Theater?

RUSH: No. No. Not even if she had a legitimate grievance, I can’t imagine her taking that occasion to deal with it. No.

CALLER: I know. That’s what gets me. I mean, can you imagine? “Growing up a white girl in south Texas, I never thought that I’d ever make it to the Apollo.” I mean, it’s ridiculous.

RUSH: It wouldn’t happen. I know. That’s a good point. But it just shows how insensitive you are.